Enzymes are normally soluble in water and when they are used to catalyse reactions occurring in aqueous solutions, their recovery is often difficult and expensive. In some cases it may be necessary to remove the enzyme from the product and even its destruction may be a tedious procedure.
This is particularly important in the biochemical field where the recovery of metabolic intermediates, the protein enzymes that catalyse their conversion; and the hormones which often control a sequence of reactions is of major importance. There is also an increasing usage of protein antibodies in an insolubilized form in radioimmunassays for clinical diagnosis. When insolubilising biologically active molecules care must be taken to ensure that the bonding of the molecules to an insoluble carrier does not destroy or deleteriously modify the activity of the molecules.
The invention has been made with all the above points in mind.